Thursday, July 25, 2013

Pizza and phones

Having trouble getting my thoughts organized at the moment. I've worked about 100 hours in the last two weeks. That's a lot of pizza. It will also be a lot of money once I get paid for it, so I can't complain too much. And by "a lot" I really mean "not a lot," but I have to take what I can get. I've about got myself dug out of that financial hole that working 6 hours a week at RadioShack put me in. So, that's something good.I have one final check to pick up from "The Shack" as the corporate higher-ups like to call it in memos. After that, I'm done with them. Either after that 100-hour paycheck or the next one, I'm going to go back to RadioShack and get my phone upgraded. It's not really something that I need, but I'd like to do something nice for myself. You have to treat yourself sometimes - otherwise you just hate your life. And I know that feeling, it's not fun. I'm looking into phones to upgrade to. I got a BlackBerry in 2009 back when they were still cool. And I upgraded it to the touch-screen BlackBerry in 2010 when whey were still cool. And I've had that phone since then and we all know what has happened to the BlackBerry since then. Research In Motion aka RIM aka the people who make the BlackBerry are attempting a comeback with the Z10 and Q10 models. I only know the names because I watched a video about them at RadioShack. I considered staying with BlackBerry and getting one of those (Z10 is full touchscreen and Q10 is physical keyboard and touchscreen) but I just don't know anymore...I've heard a lot of good things about the Galaxy S4, an android-powered smartphone. I also watched a video and read a lot of promotional material about it. So, I'm going to look some more into that and see where it takes me.One final note about RadioShack and Pizza Hut - shortly before leaving "the shack" and right after coming back to "the hut," I was required to attend a learning workshop with both. What struck me after attending the Pizza Hut workshop, since I went to the RadioShack one first, was how oddly similar they were. It was like both organizations had the same corporate "how to run a workshop" guide book and they all walked through it. Both specifically had a dry-erase board set off to the side that they referred to as "The Parking Lot." If we had any ideas or questions or concerns that were not mentioned during the presentation we would write them down or as they both said we would "park them there until later."Here's the latest in the "Really? This is my life?" series:It was a busy Tuesday night at work a week or two ago. A lot of people wanted some pizza and we were busier than we had scheduled help for. A police officer walks in and asks if he can speak with my cook. I direct him to the cook. They're talking and it seems casual. I assume it's about some sort of child support thing - he and his ex have a contentious relationship. The cook comes up to me and tells me that another cook stole a gun from another employee and pawned it. So, he needs to talk to the cop longer.It's getting busier and people are waiting around for their pizzas that haven't been made. The phone is ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. I finally answer it. It's the "area coach" - the boss above the store General Manager. "That phone rang a lot, didn't it?" he says. I explain that it's busy and one of my cooks is being questioned by the police. He tells me that he knows and that he and the other cook were both caught on video pawning that gun. He tells me to send the cook home and that they'd figure out what to do with him later.While all that's going on, there are about 20 pizzas that need made and 10 people standing there waiting for their pizzas. My mind keeps flashing back to the day in 2011 when a similar situation occurred. Learning from that day, I calmly tell the other employee to tell all incoming calls that we're closed for now and to try back later. I go to all the people there and ask which pizzas are theirs. I apologize for the wait and tell them an incident took place and that it would take a little time, but I would make all of their pizzas. And then I told them that it was "Free Pizza Day" and that nobody had to pay.And that was the latest installment of "Don't fuck around in college or else you wind up like this" theater.I'll check back in with more later. I have some non-work stuff I've wanted to talk about for a while.